This time of year, as Christmas and the New Year approaches, is a time for reflection, for looking forward rather than regret. Indeed, the year, and one’s life may have brought some setbacks, but only you alone can deal with it, and can do so in one’s own way. ‘Failure’ is a word other people use, and with which they may judge you, perhaps because you did not conform to their expectations and prejudices.

There are others who cannot see the positive in anything, only the negative.

These people are found in every family, and they may be in your household either this Christmas, or you in theirs, or you might have no choice but to spend 365 days a year under the same roof.

These people are poisonous, and will not let you be yourself, and only emanate negative energy, and destroy themselves, time over time, to become even more bitter and vicious.

One can’t chose the family one is born into. Some relatives, even parents or aunts and uncles, are awful.

This verse may resonate with some. The ‘poisonous’ types are not just at Christmas, but all year round. Being closed up with them during the Season make the turkey, goose or game of the sky or field, and the wine, taste very bitter indeed.

A flying visit.

Have you changed since the last time?

No, you’re still poison

From: Reflections 2: 55 Haiku verses: Blood II: Stopover

‘Reflections’ 1 and 2 are available on Amazon as paperback or in Kindle.

The harsh reality is that we are in another Belle Époque, where the myth that anyone can become rich is sold to the public, especially in the United States. Wealth is still unequally distributed on class and race lines, and the Anglo-Saxon world the Gatsby Curve is more marked, where the top 1 to 5 percent still take most of the income, whereas the bottom deciles remain living desperate lives.

The third Volume of the ‘Reflections’ series is in the ‘proofing’ stage.

This is a personal project, and by self-publishing on Amazon Create Space on Kindle I hope to reach an audience. Yes, admittedly, this blog brings the books to wider attention. It is then left to others to reflect upon their own experiences that the 5-7-5 verses have to say, which reflect my own experiences.

The object of the verses is to say as little as possible, but nevertheless, in these ‘snapshots’ of verses to convey the situation.

The themes in Reflections 3 continue themes explored in Reflections 1 and 2, and new themes: global capitalism, economic, inequality, neo-liberalism, suburban greed, materialism and pretension, the English obsession with home-ownership, the pressure to conform, the importance of culture, literature and art instead of consumerism, commuting to a job one hates for poor pay, the toxicity of family life, love and friendship, the myths of sporting prowess and the golf and tennis ‘culture’ of Middle England.